We covered a few miles last week. Elle had a good time in Kathmandu, shopping (why she really went) plus a little bit of working in the office and getting jabs for Evie (her justification for the trip!).

I travelled West, taking a bus to Nepalgunj down near the Indian border. Nepalgunj was hot – I only spent one night there, but it made me appreciate Pokhara even more! I picked up an old motorbike there that we are buying from some friends and travelled the 150km to Dang where I planned to help with some training. The bike is only 125cc and has a top speed of ~50km per hour, so it was a long trip!

The next four days were spent with the INF team in Dang, plus some local organisations that INF works with, trying to help them with fundraising and proposal writing. The aim was to give some teaching, but most of the time was dedicated to practical proposal writing. They seemed to enjoy it, and as ever, I was really impressed by the Nepali people's ability to stand up and talk, tell a joke or even sing in front of a group seemingly without any nerves. Trying to prseent in Nepali was hard work, and there were so many blank faces at the end of the first session that I reverted to English – fortunately there were a couple of people who could translate.

These local organisations were groups who campaigned for the rights of the disabled, ran awareness campaigns to prevent disability and gave training disabled people to help them become indenpendant. Most of them worked in very remote areas and were often the only source of hope for disabled people who are often seen as a curse and locked away out of sight. INF works with these groups and tries to develop them and help them to become independent, but it is very hard for them to raise their own money without proper access to the outside world and with corruption in local government taking away what little official funding they should get.

The ride home – another 250km – was spread over another two days. After the long straight roads of the Terai plains, it was great to get back onto the 'bango-tingo' (zig-zags) of the mountain roads and a real relief when Pokhara finally came into view. We are coming to the end of rice planting season here and the fields are beautifully green with paddies flooded and rice shoots coming through.